American Adventure day eleven: Independence at Yorktown !

The main reason I had gone south from Richmond was to visit Yorktown as from my brief bit of research Virginia didn't see that much AWI fighting it being focused further south or further north. Yorktown is part of a wider park covering Jamestown as well but I really only had time to visit the main battlefield. Strangely this is the only park I had to pay to enter ? It saw some Civil War fighting as well but this wasn't really covered either at the visitor centre or my guide book.

 

A captured cannon on display in the visitor centre. They also have various field tents but you can't really photo these.

 

One of the main French gun batteries.

 

Scene of the capture of Redoubts 9 and 10 which led to the end of the battle.

 

Redoubt 9

Following the driving tour you get to the surrender field where there is a fantastic display of captured cannons, each engraved as below 😀

 

I then headed north and stopped in at North Anna battlefield, this was an important battle in the 1864 Grant campaign but it just goes to show that not all the battlefields are visited that much. Some well preserved trenches but the whole battlefield is heavily wooded so it is very hard to get a clear picture of what happened.

 

There are some good noticed boards to tell the story

 

Some of the earth works in the woods !

In passing I stopped off at the house where Stonewall Jackson died, it is beautifully well preserved and was very quiet when I visited.

 

It contains various original items including the bed and the clock.